Year Six
by Ilanala
Summary: It was the year that broke them. sixth season AU


It was the year that broke them. It started on Kelowna—no, maybe it started earlier than that with Reese, or with Sarah or with Sha're when Daniel learned that he couldn't save everyone. Maybe it started with Shifu and his dream when Daniel began to believe that he wasn't worth saving. Maybe it even began years before when a little boy lost his ties to the world of his birth. The point was, it all started with Daniel and Kelowna.

They brought him back to the SGC after the bomb went off. In a matter of hours, he went from talking animatedly about the symptoms of radiation sickness in a voice cheerful enough to hide his terror to lying on the infirmary bed, drugged and completely unresponsive. No one heard the dialogue that went on in his head. No one heard him tell Oma that no, he would not ascend. He would die, and if there was really a God (or gods) besides all the Goa'uld, he'd find out once and for all. If not, he'd finally find the peace his life of wandering had never allowed him.

"I am sorry," Selmak said in the deep tones of the symbiote. "I cannot restore his health. I can keep him as he is, but he will never recover."

"Stop," Jack said, his voice loud and harsh in the silence as everyone held their breath waiting for someone else to make the decision. "If you can't fix him, let him go." His voice was even, but his eyes were dark. Teal'c bowed his head, resigned to the loss of another friend and fellow warrior. Sam burst into tears.

The following weeks almost ripped the team apart. Jack threw himself into work, seeking distraction from the only source he had. Sam was a wreck, struggling constantly to maintain her composure while memories of Daniel lingered in every corridor. Teal'c tried to bridge the gap, but he was not a peacemaker, and he felt his own grief at the loss of one of his closest friends.

Many believe that this was the end of the legendary SG-1. Rumors circulated that Sam might resign, or at least stop going off-world and hide away in her lab. Even if she didn't, it seemed unlikely she could continue working with Jack with the way they had been clashing regularly and violently. And yet, somehow they found common ground again, and SG-1 survived.

Time passed. Jonas joined the team, and it seemed all would be well. Then came the Ancient in Antarctica and the plague she carried, and the Tok'ra symbiote that promised to heal Jack without forcing him to remain a host. It seemed like a good idea, or at least an acceptable one given the lack of alternatives, until the Tok'ra sent word that Kanan and his host had disappeared.

It took them two and a half weeks to find Jack. A painfully long time passed before something clicked and they realized where he had gone, and an even longer time passed before Teal'c suggested a way to free him without sacrificing other lives. He came back through the Alpha Site, his face deathly pale above the black t-shirt. Sam moved to hug him (regulations be damned, she'd almost lost another teammate and she needed to reassure herself that he was there and solid and all right), but she drew back when she met his eyes and found them empty of the sparkle or intensity that defined Jack O'Neill.

He seemed to be looking through her, and she wondered if he even saw her, or just some apparition out of the nightmare he had lived. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I had to tell him. I had to make him stop. I'm sorry."

He was sent away to the facility that had once housed a supposedly schizophrenic Daniel. Sam couldn't bear to visit him. Teal'c came from time to time, but Jack never seemed to recognize him. He wondered sometimes why his friend reacted to his approach by sitting on the floor with his legs out, a look of resigned fear on his face.

General Hammond knew better than to simply assign a new commanding officer to SG-1. Jonas moved to SG-4, Teal'c to SG-12. Sam was given command of SG-9, whose primary purpose was long-term off-world science and technology research. For the time being, Hammond refrained from forming a new SG-1, adding an SG-28 instead. He didn't want to see Jack replaced any more than his former teammates did.

Months slipped by and the new arrangement became routine. SG-9 came to trust Sam's command, and learned not to try to be her friend. Jonas found in his new commanding officer a man who didn't judge him for his past actions, and who didn't see him as a poor replacement for a lost friend. Teal'c, being Teal'c, inspired fear and respect in his new teammates, but more of the first and less of the second than had been the case with SG-1.

Then came the summit of the rebel Jaffa. It was meant to be a triumph of Teal'c's cause, but instead it was a massacre. When SG-12 went to check on their missing teammate, they found him lying next to Bra'tac, surrounded by other dead rebel Jaffa. His hand lay on his symbiote pouch, a dead Goa'uld symbiote in his fist. Of the hundreds of Jaffa, he was the only one with a symbiote, but it had somehow not been enough to save him.

Sam quit the day after they brought Teal'c's body back. Hammond accepted her resignation because he knew she would be no good to them after all this, and because the Stargate program could ask no more of her. She went to visit Jack that night, and the next day she vanished. No one looked too closely at her disappearance; it was better not to know.

Hammond formed a new SG-1 several weeks later. The SGC needed a flagship team, some of their best, brightest and most experienced people. "Welcome back, SG-1," the general said as they emerged from the gate after their first mission, and if anyone noticed the tears in his eyes, they didn't say a word.


End file.
